Here we have a fake stamp covering a real attack on bombers that were not supposed to be there. I will try to get to the bottom of the creation of this unique stamp. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
This stamp is rather hard to identify. It looks North Vietnamese and indeed is printed there. Notice the rough state of the perforations. Instead though it is an issue of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, the Viet Cong. The stamp is also a little confusing because the plane blowing up on the stamp is the well known British Canberra bomber. The USA used them as well, repackaged as the B-57 and used them extensively in Vietnam, including before they were supposed to.
The Scott catalog does not recognize the issues of the Viet Cong. For a stamp to be considered real there has to be a postal system. If the Viet Cong had one, they never convinced the stamp collecting world of it.
In 1964, the USA was doing much to help prop up the government of South Vietnam. The mostly communist National Liberation Front was receiving support from North Vietnam and trying to overthrow the South government, which was left by the French when they left in 1954. Under the terms of the Geneva Protocol, outsiders were not allowed to deploy jets to Vietnam. Thus the early bombers sent were old B26 piston engine bombers. In early 1964, a B26 crashed in the USA and the fleet was grounded. It was decided to then get around the ban by deploying B57 Canberra jet bombers, but claim they were out of the Philippines. The idea was to operate them with South Vietnamese markings and joint crews. This just did not work out. In late 1964 48 B57s arrived at Bien Hoa airbase. Four of the aircraft crashed on arrival. The airfield was also not secure from Viet Cong attack. On Halloween night 1964 the base came under a 30 minute long mortar barrage. The base was crowded and many of the bombers were parked in the open air. Five B57s were destroyed that night and 13 more were damaged. This is the attack depicted on the stamp. The idea of joint manning with the South Vietnamese did not work out as the South Vietnamese crews thought the plane was beyond their capabilities. There was another disaster involving the B-57 in early 1965 when a fully loaded bomber exploded while waiting in line to take off that set up chain reaction explosions on over a dozen additional bombers.
The B57 Canberra eventually proved useful in Vietnam with it’s long range and war load allowing it to fly up and down the Ho Chi Minh trail for hours at a time hunting supply trucks. The B57 was one of the last American plane units to leave Vietnam in 1972. The Bien Hoa airbase was directly attacked during the Tet offensive and nearly fell with many planes damaged. However the South Vietnamese managed to hold on to it until the surrender in 1975. The air base is still operational and Vietnam operate SU 30 fighter bombers from there.
One interesting issue that arose as South Vietnam fell was who runs it post war. Viet Cong officials tried to set themselves up in the government offices in Saigon after the fall. This did not last and quickly South Vietnam was being run directly from Hanoi. It is now the official position of Vietnam that Viet Cong units were part of the North Vietnamese Army.
Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast Vietnam veterans. Come again for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2019.